The following “Rules” are posted up in New Jersey school-house:—
“No kissing girls in school-time; no licking the master during holy days.”
At fifteen or sixteen, if not at college, the boy assumes the man; he enters into business, as a clerk to some merchant, or in some store. His father’s home is abandoned, except when it may suit his convenience, his salary being sufficient for most of his wants. He frequents the bar, calls for gin cocktails, chews tobacco, and talks politics. His theoretical education, whether he has profited much by it or not, is now superseded by a more practical one, in which he obtains a most rapid proficiency. I have no hesitation in asserting that there is more practical knowledge among the Americans than among any other people under the sun. (note 7).
It is singular that in America, everything, whether it be of good of evil, appears to assist the country in going a-head. This very want of parental control, however it may affect the morals of the community, is certainly advantageous to America, as far as her rapid advancement is concerned. Boys are working like men for years before they would be in England; time is money, and they assist to bring in the harvest.
But does this independence on the part of the youth of America end here? On the contrary, what at first was independence, assumes next the form of opposition, and eventually that of control.
The young men before they are qualified by age to claim their rights as citizens, have their societies, their book-clubs, their political meetings, their resolutions, all of which are promulgated in the newspapers; and very often the young men’s societies are called upon by the newspapers to come forward with their opinions. Here is opposition. Mr Cooper says, on page 152 of his “Democrat”:—
“The defects in American deportment are, notwithstanding, numerous and palpable. Among the first may be ranked, insubordination in children, and a great want of respect for age. The former vice may be ascribed to the business habits of the country, which leave so little time for parental instruction, and, perhaps, in some degree to the acts of political agents, who, with their own advantages in view, among the other expedients of their cunning, have resorted to the artifice of separating children from their natural advisers by calling meetings of the young to decide on the fortunes and policy of the country.”
But what is more remarkable, is the fact that society has been usurped by the young people, and the married and old people have been, to a certain degree, excluded from it. A young lady will give a ball, and ask none but young men and young women of her acquaintance; not a chaperon is permitted to enter, and her father and mother are requested to stay upstairs, that they may not interfere with the amusement. This is constantly the case in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and I have heard bitter complaints made by the married people concerning it. Here is control. Mr Sanderson, in his “Sketches of Paris,” observes:—
“They who give a tone to society should have maturity of mind; they should have refinement of taste, which is a quality of age. As long as college beaux and boarding-school misses take the lead, it must be an insipid society, in whatever community it may exist. Is it not villainous in your Quakerships of Philadelphia, to lay us, before we have lived half our time out, upon the shelf! Some of the native tribes, more merciful, eat the old folks out of the way.”
However, retribution follows: in their turn they marry, and are ejected; they have children, and are disobeyed. The pangs which they have occasioned to their own parents are now suffered by them in return, through the conduct of their own children; and thus it goes on, and will go on, until the system is changed.